Tuesday, May 15, 2012

According to Wikipedia, which my
students all claim is a super-credible source, a dystopia is: the
idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise
of being utopian.

I have read no less than
twenty of these books in the last little bit, and in each one there’s usually one
major crack in the foundation of the world, including: a bloodthirsty Capitol
(need I say more?); love’s been excised from people’s brains, everyone dies in
their early twenties; no one dies and young people are illegal; teens have to
go live in the woods and learn to defend Canada or something. What’s with all
these broken worlds? Why do they speak to teens? Heck, forget about the teens
for a second, why do I keep reading
these things? Because I just bought another one about some sort of crying
disease that’s killing everyone.

The drama queen in me says I
already live in a repressive and controlled state. My life is governed by
bells, which ring at set times, and must not be disobeyed. I eat my lunch, while
working, out of a brown bag, and then when I go home I have more work to
do. Since a lot of my students
work at lunchtime too, this description applies to them as well, though I do
get to sit at a bigger desk. So maybe dystopias simply take a semi-familiar
setting and amp up the stakes.

I think we respond to these
increased stakes most of all, because we as a culture often lack a true sense
of purpose, in our education and in our lives. Just this past year, I think I
accidentally broke some of my best students. We read Neil Postman’s The End of Education: Redefining the Value
of School. (If you are a teacher you should read this book—seriously.)
Postman’s main thesis is that there is no longer any true sense of purpose for
education. When America was younger, there were what he calls gods which inspired us, chief among them
was one he called The God of Economic Utility. This god’s tacit promise was
that if we work hard in school, we will be rewarded with a well-paying and
secure job, perhaps even one we enjoy. Beginning with my generation in the
eighties, this god fell on hard times, along with the rest of us, and I think
we all now realize that this promise is not one that’s always kept. One of my
students who has always stayed up half the night to complete her work
flawlessly, for years, sat in our discussion after reading this book and asked,
“Why did I do all that? What was it all for?” But much as I hate to be the one
to pull back the curtain, I do think it’s better than living in the dark.

Postman discusses other past
inspirations for learning, including a true sense of civic responsibility and a
feeling that we have a voice in the direction of our government. Obvi, these
ideas are toast too. Part of the problem is doubtless growth—as our nation gets
bigger, each of us has a smaller share of voice in how things run. But I think
kids are savvy—even those who don’t get stuck in my AP Language class realize,
if only on a subconscious level, that they are working hard, but don’t really
even know what they’re working for.
(I speak here of the kids who still work hard in school, who are also probably
sharing the part of the Venn diagram that includes the YA readers. I’m glad these kids are
reading anything, but I love the idea of dystopias because they are A)more accessible and widely read by teens than Neil Postman
and B) I think they accomplish some of the same effect: waking us up, helping
us to not lead unexamined lives, stuck on our treadmill of work and preparation
for an uncertain future. The best, and scariest of these books, I think, is
M.T. Anderson’s Feed. Anyone who
thinks that teenagers are not capable of receiving a cautionary message aimed
right at them should give a teenager a copy. Most of them get it, and they look
down at their cell phones and tablets with horror—wide awake, at least for a
moment, to the path we are all on.

When
I feel a little trapped by the bells and the doubt, wondering what I’m actually
accomplishing and what kind of world I’m getting my students ready for, books
like Feed actually give me hope. I
don’t know what the future will look like. I hope it’s not completely broken
and doesn’t feature reapings, feeds, or zombies*. But I know that the readers
will be a bit more prepared for whatever the future brings, because they are thinking—not just about what they have to do to put a roof over
their heads, but about why we are all
here. I think it’s important that at least some of us stay awake to ask those kinds of
questions.

*I’ve taken several quizzes online. I know the odds aren’t
in my favor in the event of a zombie apocalypse L

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

So today I’m thinking about the
importance of a shiny surface, for a couple of reasons. The cool one is that I
got my first peek at my cover art (it’s so awesome!). The embarrassing one is
that I was watching The Celebrity
Apprentice last night, and Miss Universe finally got fired. (I’d like to blame my roommate for making me
watch this show, but the truth is, she just got me to watch the first one. I’ve
been a willing participant in the reality TV time suck ever since). So for
those who only watch fancy shows like Downton
Abbey or something, this Miss Universe person was pretty thick. On the
final challenge she asked the musicians composing a commercial jingle to make
it more “yellow or pink.” For weeks on end, she’s sat in Trump’s boardroom* and
rocked some truly impressive cheekbones and the air of a wounded yet confused
baby animal. Though she had a charming way of murdering the English language
(she’s from Venezuela) she pouted when she didn’t get to be the announcer or
the MC on a challenge. She only wanted, she said, to give one hundred and ten
percent (proving that the U.S. is not the only nation to fail utterly at
teaching young people what a percent actually is). This whole pretty/victim
thing worked for her while a lot of seemingly (much) smarter and more talented people
got canned.

That
girl is going far on the strength of
a very shiny surface, which I guess is nothing new. I was on about Pride and Prejudice last time, and even
in that world, Lizzie at first preferred Wickham because he was handsome and
engaging. Young lasses in today’s romances don’t fare much better. In fact, I’d
argue, some of them are making out much worse. That’s right, I said it. Two
hundred-plus years on, we’re now dealing with Bella Swan and her obsession with
her 104-year old boyfriend (husband, stalker…semantics). That’s right, he’s so
old, I don’t even have to spell out his age. Shouldn’t this be, I don’t know,
disgusting?

But wait, he looks like a seventeen year old. So it’s all cool.

Or
is it? I mean, think about it. He’s a hundred. And four. All of him is that
old, no matter what he looks like. And oddly enough, I don’t know if there’s
ever been a romantic hero who had a more old fart fuddy-duddy personality than
Edward Cullen. “Oh, do stop ravishing me. Alas, my virtue! Please stop fondling
me now so that I may continue reciting Shakespeare and listening to Debussey
with my eyes closed!”

That
girl’s in love with a fogey, and no mistake. What about Bella’s TV spawn, Elena
from The Vampire Diaries? She’s got
the hots for two majorly old dudes, though in fairness only one of them has the
soul of an old fart. The other one, Damon, looks great (he also looks thirty
five, but that’s a whole other issue). But he’s a stone-cold killer—and not
just in a vampires-have-to-eat sort of way. He’s got this habit of ripping
people’s actual hearts out. But he’s handsome as hell, and he loves at least one person, so we root for him. At least
these dudes don’t sparkle in sunlight.

Of
course, there are a lot of other books out there about smart girls who are just
everyday pretty or even almost-plain, smart girls who read books and have
ideas, written by slightly older girls of similar physiognomy and inclination.
And then we have the ass-kicking girls, but that’s a story for another time.

Sometimes
we have inspiring book girls that lose a little something in the translation to
the screen. Hermione muddled through the first few years at Hogwarts with
frizzy hair and buck teeth, but when she showed up at the multiplex, she was a future
Burberry model. And consider, for many young ladies, as I lamented last time, the
movie version is the only iteration of Hermione Granger that they will ever get
to see. But, at least Hermione was in an age-appropriate relationship with a
boy who looked—and acted—like a young guy.

Hooray
for Ron Weasley. He may be a bit of a git sometimes, but at least he’s not a
hundred.

*If I ever make it really big, I mean, like I marry an oil
baron or accidentally discover the next Facebook or something, I’m going to be
just like Donald Trump and employ someone, full time, to sit outside my office
with nothing but a tiny notebook and gold pen, and she will not be allowed to
do anything but doodle all day long, just in case an important call comes in
for me, or I feel like summoning someone without delay. She will have fancy
gold scissors as well, in case of a cutting emergency.